Officials have given a more specific timeline of events of the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
Col. Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said a teacher had propped open the door that the gunman used to enter Robb Elementary School on Tuesday morning.
A teacher, who was not identified, was seen on video propping the door open at 11:27 a.m. There was no reason given why the person did so.
At 11:28 a.m. the eventual gunman, later identified as Salvador Ramos, crashed his pickup into a ditch behind the school. He left the truck with an AR-15 style rifle, The Associated Press reported.
Shortly after, he fired upon two people outside of a funeral home.
At one point, a school district officer did respond to the shooting. The officer was pursuing another person whom he thought was the suspect but who was actually a teacher, according to McCraw, The New York Times reported.
“In doing so, he drove right by the suspect who was hunkered down by a vehicle, where he began shooting at the school,” McCraw said, according to the newspaper.
The gunman entered the building at 11:33 a.m., and local officers entered two minutes after, at 11:35 a.m., McCraw said, the Times reported.
By 12:03 p.m., there were 19 officers inside the hallway where the gunman was barricaded in a classroom, McCraw said.
>>Read: Texas school shooting: Bystanders shouted at police to enter Robb Elementary
At 12:10 p.m., the first U.S. Marshals Service deputies arrived, the AP reported. They traveled nearly 70 miles from the border town of Del Rio, according to a tweet from the agency.
Border Patrol tactical officers entered the school at 12:45 p.m., Travis Considine, the Texas Department of Public Safety spokesperson, said, according to the AP.
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They did not breach the door until after 12:50 p.m. and killed the armed man. They said they could hear him firing before breaching the room, using keys given to them by the school’s janitor, McCraw said, according to the Times.
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At one point, a girl inside one of the classrooms called 911 several times during the standoff. At one point she asked dispatchers, “Please send the police now.”
McCraw explained a timeline of calls to the emergency center:
- A female called from classroom 112 at 12:03 p.m. lasting 1 minute and 23 seconds. She told operators who she was and where she was located, whispering the information.
- She called again at 12:10 p.m., saying that there were multiple people who were dead.
- She called back three minutes later at 12:13 p.m. and again another three minutes later, at 12:16 p.m. saying that “eight to nine students (were) alive.”
- Twenty minutes later, a call came in during which two or three shots were heard.
- The girl called 911 “and was told to stay on the line and be very quiet,” McCraw said.
- At 12:47 p.m. the girl called asking to “Send police now,” McCraw said.
- At one point she said she could hear police.
- At 12:51, the call got “very loud,” according to McCraw. He said it sounded like officers were getting children from the classroom.
The two children who called in to 911 both survived, The New York Times reported.
>>Read: Texas school shooting: Fourth grader survived by playing dead, aunt says
When questioned why it took so long to respond, McCraw said the on-scene commander believed it was a “barricaded subject situation” instead of an active shooter, the Times reported. The commander believed that the children were not at risk.
McCraw said, that with the benefit of hindsight, “It was the wrong decision. Period.”
>>Read: Second student says he survived Texas school shooting by playing dead
The chief of police of Uvalde schools was the incident commander at the scene of the shooting, the Times reported.
McCraw also confirmed that Border Patrol agents and other law enforcement officers were held back from engaging the shooter.
>>Read: Texas school shooting: Tactical unit held back from entering by local police, officials say
McCraw also broke down just how much ammunition the gunman had and how much he had used.
The shooter had a total of 58 magazines that he had taken to the school.
Three were still on the shooter when he died.
Two were found in classroom 112 and six were in classroom 111. Of the ones found in the classrooms, five were on the ground and one was in the rifle, CNN reported.
There were 32 additional magazines outside the school but still on the property. One was just outside the building while the others were in the shooter’s backpack that he had left behind.
There were an additional 15 magazines left in the truck he had crashed outside of the school.
The gunman had two more magazines at his home, that were not among the 58 that officials linked to Tuesday’s shooting.
The shooter had purchased and had 1,657 total rounds. Officials found 315 rounds inside the building with 142 of them spent, CNN reported.
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